Negative Encounters Really Hurt

November 16, 1986|By JOSHUA FISCHMAN, Special to the News/Sun-Sentinel 1986 Psychology Today. Distributed by Los Angeles Times Syndicate.

``A friend,`` said Ralph Waldo Emerson, ``may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.`` Close relationships with people do bring joys and pleasure, but several studies indicate this type of intimacy also can lead to close encounters of the worst kind.

Friendship and social relations, prized so highly by Emerson, appear even more valuable in recent years. Studies have linked social support from friends and relatives to better physical and mental health, and these have contributed to the popular belief that social ties promote well-being.

But friendship can be a two-edged sword, often cutting very deeply. Networks of friends and relatives place many demands on time and personal resources, as well as providing the benefits of support. In psychologist Karen Rook`s study of the social networks of 120 elderly widows, the women reported that about two-thirds of the people who made their lives more difficult were friends or relatives.

``Other people can be sources of conflict, they can strew obstacles in one`s path, or their well-intentioned efforts to help you can backfire,`` says psychologist Marybeth Shinn, who has studied stress and social relationships among working parents, college students and others. ``The idea that personal interaction can cause stress is not new, but the people on the social support bandwagon haven`t looked at the negative aspects.``

Unfortunately, negative encounters appear to drag down people`s sense of well-being more than positive ones raise it up. In her study of elderly widows, Rook found that personal criticism or invasions of privacy had a powerful negative effect on their morale. In contrast, positive exchanges such as emotional support or shared leisure activities did relatively little to improve their mood.

``A single heated exchange at a tranquil wedding, for example, may ruin the experience,`` Rook says, ``but one pleasant exchange in the midst of a wedding filled with strife has little power to restore tranquillity.``

This bias toward the bad was true for women who only reported a few social problems as well as for those who reported many, regardless of their health, education or the number of people they felt close to. The few other studies comparing the effects of positive and negative exchanges have similar findings. In a study by Shinn and her colleagues of 130 college students, unpleasant encounters accounted for more differences in well-being than pleasant encounters did. And in a study of people caring for victims of Alzheimer`s disease, upsetting actions by members of their social networks were closely tied to caregivers` depression, while helpful actions did nothing to lift their spirits.

One possible explanation for this human tendency to accentuate the negative, Rook says, is that bad run-ins stand out sharply against a background of generally positive experiences. Moreover, we can`t really tell whether these positive acts come from genuine warm feelings or from social obligations of politeness and helpfulness. People are supposed to be nice, Rook says, so there is some uncertainty about the motives behind pleasant actions. Nastiness, on the other hand, is straightforward. It goes so strongly against the grain of social convention, Rook says, that we ``can be confident that these acts reflect malice, or at least insufficient caring.``

Karen Rook, Ph.D., is at the University of California, Irvine. She reported some of her findings in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Marybeth Shinn, Ph.D., is at New York University. The study appeared in the Journal of Social Issues.